


The Cherry on the Cake

by Wearysea



Series: Loving Deceit Hours [3]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Loving Deceit Hours, M/M, Self-Esteem Issues, Sympathetic Deceit Sanders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-28 05:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21131393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wearysea/pseuds/Wearysea
Summary: Baking is a coping mechanism, unfortunately it's not the only coping mechanism Patton has.





	The Cherry on the Cake

**Author's Note:**

> Loving Deceit Hours - Patton

Patton bakes when he’s stressed, so tiramisue him. It gives him something nice to focus on for a while and it makes everyone else happy too! It’s just an all-round pleasant experience, even if he has a bit of a hard time eating things, that’s what his friends are for.

Patton becomes stressed often, so he bakes often. No one finds it strange to come down first thing in the morning and find that Patton is making a cake. No one notices when he discretely wipes his eye.

Roman and Logan are arguing, as per usual, about ideas for the next video, but they settle down for breakfast. Logan can never be irritated when he’s eating Crofter’s, it’s just impossible. Speaking of Crofter’s:

“Patton? I can’t find any Crofter’s.”

Hands pausing over the mixing bowl, Patton looks up thoughtfully, “I did move some things around earlier… let me jamend that” then breaks into a huge grin at the other two’s groans.

“What? I thought you’d be jamping for joy at the reunion.”

Patton continues to search through the cupboards he’d opened to far as he punned again. Someone get a bucket because this father figure is on fire!

It doesn’t take long for him to find the misplaced jar and to set it on the breakfast table making the string of jokes a 3-hit combo with “a breakfast worthy of a jampion.”

Roman slams his head down on the table, barely missing his cereal, hiding a smile with the wood. “Pat, you’re terrible. Someone needs to tape your mouth shut."

“If the punishment fits the cream.”

“You really are on a bread roll today, huh, Pat?”

“Well, I did write my diploma dessertation on candy puns.”

That one gets a snort out of Logan, he always did like come backs aimed at Roman, educational wordplay notwithstanding. Cakeling like a dragon-witch, Patton continues his quest for confectionary.

It isn’t long before Roman and Logan are finished with breakfast, and rehashing their argument, while Patton announces the preparations for the cake are nearly done – “Baking news everyone, the chocolate cake is in the oven” – and everyone bar Patton leaves the kitchen to <strike>argue some more</strike> go about their daily duties.

The smile falls from his face like a brick falling to the floor. He feels okay, but smiling is tiring. He pointedly doesn’t look at his wrists as he pulls up his sleeves and grabs a pair of latex gloves for washing up. He’s fine, no one needs to notice anything, there’s nothing wrong, but even if there was, no need to worry anyone else.

“That isn’t a worrying train of thought at all.”

Patton twists around at bake-neck speed, only to come face to half-snake-face with Deceit.

“I couldn’t hear you lying to yourself from across the mindscape.”

Deceit’s seen right through him, into his head, there’s no point to a disguise but the smile is sticky taped to Patton regardless. The heart pounds in the heart’s chest.

“Hello there, my slithery friend! I’m just washing up, but there’s a cake in the oven if you want to stick around for it.” Out of all the responses, Deceit wasn’t expecting Patton to blatantly ignore the issue he was trying to bring up. Patton did ask if he wanted to stick around though, and for once he was going to take that at face value… he felt this was too important not to address now.

So, Deceit sits at the kitchen table. He knows Virgil won’t be up for a while, if the repeated ‘I’ll go to sleep in 10 minutes’ thoughts Deceit heard last night were anything to go by.

Patton continues to stand in front of the sink, cleaning the mixing bowls and utensils he used. Once finished, he was careful to keep his forearms out of Deceit’s view while he removed his gloves.

Patton then goes to the fridge and pulls out a tub of cherries. He liked cherries. He liked cherry flavoured things. They made him actually want to smile. He needed that right now.

Deceit was still silently watching Patton with equal parts curiosity and weariness when Patton sat down directly across from him, opened the tub surprisingly violently, and plucked a cherry from the bunch.

After eating three, he offered the tub to Deceit, who took two, and it was as he pulled his hand back that Deceit realised that he was bleeding. The forefinger he had used to open the tub had gotten a nasty cut in the process… but Patton wasn’t reacting, he just held his hand slightly in the air while the droplets gathered on the table beneath it. Goddamn, that smile was creepy in combination.

Deceit had known very keenly what was wrong before he decided to tackle the issue head on, but he found himself at a loss for what to do during the conversation he thought he would already have started by now.

“Patton, I-”

“You know what I really like?”

“…Yes, I do.”

“Cherry flavoured frosting. I love it. I made some earlier for the cake.” Patton pauses to eat up another cherry, “I like them cherry much.”

The almost robotic way he recites this almost has Deceit running for the imagination, and in the split second of considering this he doesn’t know which side. Remus for guidance, or Roman for assistance. Instead, he conjures a bandaid and reaches across the table to gently grasp Patton’s wrist.

This is what breaks him.

He’s crying before either of them realise. Hiccuping sobs alert them both, causing Deceit to hasten in his patch-job of Patton’s finger. Once finished, he makes no move to release the wrist, and instead uses one of Virgil’s panic attack techniques – tapping out a breathing schedule, he’s sure that Patton knows it – until he’s coherent enough to speak again.

“Thank you.”

Patton’s voice is as weak as the attempt to continue smiling, but Deceit doesn’t mention it, instead he chooses to get to the point, deadly serious about the task at hand.

“Patton, I don’t know you’re harming yourself.”

This nearly has him crying again, but the tapping hasn’t stopped and it really does help.

“… Why are you trying to help?”

“Because I don’t relate.”

There’s no more crying to break the silence. Patton lifts up his other arm and tugs down Deceit’s sleeve. He’ll apologise for not asking later, right now he just needs to confirm he’s not alone.

Patton finds angry, messy red lines on blotchy scaly skin, along with white, messy ghosts of lines.

The oven chooses that moment to chide Patton for not watching it. Away from Deceit and oven mitts on in the blink of an eye, Patton yoinks the layers of the cake out of the heat and onto the countertop. He may or may not have mumbled “release the caken” as he does it, but who's to say. Before removing the cake from the tins, Patton turns to Deceit – who has now covered his wrist back up – and asks if he wants to help decorate, not needing to bother letting it cool.

That’s when the penny drops for Deceit, cutting and baking are two halves of the same coin, a distraction from mental pain, and he’s up next to Patton, nodding as he watches the other place the cherry icing on the counter. As Patton puts a healthy (whose he kidding, it’s chocolate cake) amount on the top of the first layer, a gloved hand reaches for unoccupied fingers.

Now THAT puts a real smile on Patton’s face, one he actually feels.

Patton often craves affection, but the fact that it’s coming from suave, drop dead gorgeous Deceit really is the cherry on the cake. 

**Author's Note:**

> Patton deserves all of the hugs. That episode hurted. You know the one.
> 
> Also, thank you Punpedia for your contribution to this fic.


End file.
